nonbiomumhttps://nonbiomum.wordpress.com
diary of a non-biological lesbian mum-to-beMon, 19 Mar 2018 14:22:09 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngnonbiomumhttps://nonbiomum.wordpress.com
Sucks to be mehttps://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2016/02/03/sucks-to-be-me/
https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2016/02/03/sucks-to-be-me/#respondWed, 03 Feb 2016 09:07:33 +0000http://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/?p=64Continue reading →]]>Very quick post just to say I’ve worked out why I suck at blogging and blogging about this topic in general. This could also be why there are so few resources on this topic. It’s hard. It’s hard to condense down the frustrations, fears, anger and depression that goes along with this process into meaningful posts. It’s hard not to just wah about how hard it is. It’s even hard to get the motivation to write.

In a nutshell there are long periods of nothing to report combined with the short periods of is she/isn’t she, followed by the blow of not being successful. It creeps into all aspects of your life and eats away at you until you’re numb and just avoiding thinking about it until you absolutely have to. As the nonbiomum you feel totally powerless whilst also analysing your technique (am I getting the syringe in far enough, am I doing something wrong with the inseminations). The process itself is hard. There’s no romance, there’s little connection – it’s just functional get it in and get it done. Is that the problem? Are my fears affecting things? Is my panic everytime I think about us being successful causing us to fail?

]]>https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2016/02/03/sucks-to-be-me/feed/0gvrw101Absentee bloggerhttps://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/absentee-blogger/
https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/absentee-blogger/#respondSun, 04 Oct 2015 21:02:30 +0000http://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/?p=60Continue reading →]]>Apologies for the lack of posts recently. Combination of things including being very busy at work has meant that I’ve not had the brain space to blog. I must try harder.

We are several cycles into trying to get biomum pregnant. So far we have at least one suspected early miscarriage and lots of exciting two week wait symptoms but no positive pregnancy tests. The one false alarm (turned out the line was in the wrong place and was just an accumlation of indicator) did almost send me into a tail spin of trying to work how we are actually going to cope with having a child. I feel like we are trapped in this weird state of biological clocks ticking, with an awareness that it could take a while to be successful, whilst also not in any way being in the best position to actually have a child.

By ‘best position’ I’m talking about ideal scenario. We are in a much better state than some who have children and manage to cope. For the cautious soul I can sometimes be though, it is non-ideal. Equally, I am aware that there is never a right time and you have to take a leap of faith. I do worry that I won’t be able to provide for my family though. I feel a certain degree of pressure, not from anyone else or even noticeably from myself, I’m not sure where it comes from. It’s sort of ambient pressure I suppose. I’m not even sure I can articulate what the pressure is. I wonder if prospective fathers feel this, vague though it is?

In other news I still struggle with other people’s pregnancies. Not all of them by any means and I feel awkward about my feelings towards the others. I may explore this in another post but I’m failing to articulate it in an appropriate way right now.

I will hand the blog over to biomum at some point for her to note down some of her thoughts. Watch this space.

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]]>https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/absentee-blogger/feed/0gvrw101Some light reliefhttps://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/some-light-relief/
https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/some-light-relief/#respondTue, 14 Jul 2015 15:17:51 +0000http://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/?p=57This is not meant to be rude about any pregnant women in particular – it’s just a bit of light relief….

1) More often than not this will be a thoroughly unromantic process. This is ok.

This is not always the case by any means. We have managed to inject (no pun intended) some romance into insemination and the more adept I get with a syringe the better this will get. However, as with many couples trying to conceive (gay or straight), sometimes the process is going to be quick and functional. This is ok. The end result is the main thing and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if it occurs via a business-like insemination while the dinner is cooking or if it is a wonderful romantic evening with candles and music. All that matters is that it creates a baby.

2) Speculums – more trouble than they are worth

I have come to dislike speculums. To be fair, the years of having smear tests haven’t exactly enamoured me towards them but now I truly dislike them. They are fiddly. They make the whole thing a lot more detached and clinical and also, in my experience, contribute to way more spillage that if we don’t use them. I don’t know if it’s a case of angles and getting the syringe in the right place but every time we use a speculum we end up making more of a mess than if we don’t. I appreciate that there is always going to be some leakage (gravity etc) but I’d like to give the wee swimmers as much chance as possible to do their job and it’s disheartening to feel like a lot of the semen has been lost whilst trapped in the speculum. Syringe and extender seems to work much better.

3) There are things you need a lot of and things you can reuse

We ordered a deluxe insemination kit from Pride Angel. In it we got lots and lots of eminently washable and reusable items – syringes, sample pots etc but only three measures of the lubricant which aids conception. Most lubricant is actually quite bad for sperm and if you are going the speculum route you definitely want to be using some. It’s also reasonably tricky to get hold of (special order from our local Boots) so it baffles me as to why we had six syringes and sample pots (seriously, these can be rewashed/sterilised and re-used) and only three vials of lube. My advice – spend money on the lube and re-use the plasticware.

4) Ovulation predictor kits can be inconclusive

Don’t panic. This doesn’t mean you aren’t ovulating. It might just be that the kits are sensitive enough to pick up your hormone levels. If you are charting in times of days since last period and you feel it’s the right time, it probably is. Use the kits by all means but also listen to your body.

5) Towels and cushions are your friends

This is not always a comfortable process. Towels mean if there is any leakage you’re not fretting about the cushion covers and that the clean-up is quick and easy afterwards. Cushions make everything more comfortable, especially in terms of keeping the pelvis tilted to help the swimmers. Extreme angles are uncomfortable and probably not necessary.

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]]>https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/home-insemination-the-things-we-learn-pt-1/feed/0gvrw101Fun with speculumshttps://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/07/11/fun-with-speculums/
https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/07/11/fun-with-speculums/#respondSat, 11 Jul 2015 09:49:23 +0000http://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/?p=49Continue reading →]]>I know biomum has been waiting for this post for a while. The first attempt aka what not to do. I say that but it wasn’t that bad. We have agreed with donor to try to inseminate several times a month but so far it has been difficult to pin down the optimum point using ovulation predictor kits – the nice clear digital ones are expensive and the cheap and cheerful (and medically used) ones with the pink lines are difficult. Is that second pink line darker the first or not? Who knows. It all seems like a bit of a dark art.

Having agreed the contract in principle (though not yet signed and witnessed) we realised it was probably, maybe, just about the right time and given we had received a large box of goodies from Pride Angel that needed trying out we thought we’d give it a go. This was amusingly referred to as a dry run. Oh, what a misnomer.

This has also been referred to as the most unromatic night of ‘passion’ that we’ve ever had. Firstly we have instructions. My favourite part of these instructions in terms of the insemination process is that I am to be ‘careful not to place the end of the tip too close to the cervix’ and also to ‘not direct the semen directly at the cervix’. There are several issues with this – the main one being it’s dark and it terms of ‘directing’ once there’s a speculum and a syringe in there you can’t see a damn thing never mind what to aim at or in this case not. I refuse to wear a headtorch (flashbacks to a very awkward and ill-advised coil insertion where my former GP chatted to me about her upcoming caving holiday whilst wearing a headtorch and inserting said coil – really, just, no) and the only other way of seeing what the hell is going on in there would be some kind of elaborate fibre optic camera set up. Again, no.

The use of instructions does tend to kill any semblance of this being a romantic endeavour (though with practice the instruction can be left to one side) and it does feel a bit like a Blue Peter ‘make’ just without the yoghurt pot and washing up liquid bottle. Home insemination – you will need 1 pot of semen, 1 speculum, 1 syringe with optional syringe extender, 1 measure of sperm-friendly lubricant, cushions and an old towel.

Alas we did not know about the towel in advance. For optimal chance of success our instructions advised keeping biomum’s pelvis tilted using cushions for half an hour after insemination. It also helps the person doing the insemination (i.e me) to see what she’s doing during insemination so we dutifully stacked cushions under biomum. Here’s the thing, there is a degree of mess created in this process when things are removed post insemination. I suspect this is worse if you use a speculum and as such there was a least one cushion cover which needed a damn good clean. Old towels people, use ’em.

We did laugh a lot during this first attempt. Not least at me with a syringe in one hand and instructions in the other trying to read what to do next by candlelight – hey at least we tried to make this slightly romantic.

Nothing came of our first attempt in terms of pregnancy – though we have a suspicion that egg and sperm did indeed meet. I’m ever-so-slightly relieved that I don’t have to tell my son or daughter that whilst they were definitely wanted and planned for (it’s not like biomum can accidentally fall on a speculum and a syringe of spunk), they were in fact the ‘dry run’.

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]]>https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/07/11/fun-with-speculums/feed/0gvrw101Not the daddyhttps://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/not-the-daddy/
https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/not-the-daddy/#respondSun, 05 Jul 2015 18:30:07 +0000http://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/?p=45Continue reading →]]>I know biomum is desperate for me to impart the wisdom (and hilarity) of our first insemination attempt but I actually feel like exploring some of the feelings I have about not only not expecting a child (yet) but being the prospective nonbiomum around pregnant women.

Short version – it sucks. Not only do you have the we’re not yet expecting a child jealousy but as a woman who isn’t going to carry her child it is so, so hard to be around pregnant women.

This is in no way meant to be a negative reflection on my female friends and relatives who are or have been pregnant. Even ones whose conversations have revolved around pregnancy for 9 months. It’s a huge thing in their lives and totally fair that they should want to share it with others. However, as someone wanting a child but not being the one to carry that child it’s hard, really hard. There is the usual jealousy, mixed with being overjoyed for pregnant friend of course, but jealous that it is not you that is about to become a parent. This is even worse around first-time mums as every experience is new and whilst sharing in that is great, a small part of me (sometimes a large part) weeps inside at every shared pregnancy joy.

Add to that the fact that when it is our turn to be expecting a wee one (hopefully soon) I still won’t be experiencing the same things. I won’t be pregnant. I won’t be the father. I will have no genetic or biological link to the child my wife will be carrying. What does that make me in the pregnancy? A birth partner? A helper? I will be a mother without any of the experiences that go into that as the foetus grows. Some people have said it is like being the father – the father doesn’t experience pregnancy first-hand. But unlike a father, I have no input into making the baby – other than inseminating biomum with the aid of syringes and speculums. I know it sounds like I’m hung up on genetics but it feels like it matters, and at the point of preparing to be nonbiomum around pregnant friends, it feels like it really matters.

You could say it is no different to adopting a child but for the most part that is at least a shared experience with your partner. Neither of you go through pregnancy and neither of you are biologically the parent.

It feels isolating to be in the situation of being nonbiomum. biomum has pregnant friends and friends who are biological mothers to share experiences with – this is not her sharing her experiences but having ‘the shared experience’ of being a biological mother. Fathers have other dads and dads-to-be to have that shared experience with. That ‘you can only truly know it if you have lived it’ thing. I don’t know anyone in my situation to share it with. I don’t have anyone who has been through this to give me advice and to bounce thoughts and ideas off. This is why I started this blog – so that anyone coming after me might find some ‘shared experience’ to cling to.

So. Some statements. I am nonbiomum and I am jealous of pregnant women. I find them hard to be around even if I love them dearly. I am scared of being forgotten about during the pregnancy. I don’t yet know what role I have in the coming journey. I am frustrated that this all has to be so hard.

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]]>https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/not-the-daddy/feed/0gvrw101Donor search – Part 2: Our journeyhttps://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/donor-search-part-2-our-journey/
https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/donor-search-part-2-our-journey/#respondMon, 29 Jun 2015 12:18:29 +0000http://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/?p=35Continue reading →]]>I’m not going to go into the specifics and details of our interactions with potential donors as that seems inappropriate. When we first started thinking about having a baby we thought long and hard about whether we wanted a known donor or an anonymous one. There are pros and cons to each and I found it hard to decide on what I wanted to do. We’d already ruled out completely anonymous donation via a clinic – the cost was too high especially when you consider trying to conceive 3 times per cycle, plus it had that very impersonal feel of having to go via a clinic. As you will see this is not a romantic process at all but we did want to keep some semblance of us creating this baby together. That rapidly goes out the window when doctors are involved.

Initially we didn’t know about the existence of places like Cryos and so our first thought was asking friends or using something like Pride Angel to meet someone willing to help. Both of these would come under the known donor heading for me – meeting a stranger through Pride Angel would lead to the donor becoming known as there would need to be conversations face to face, contracts and meet-ups several times a month.

I’m going to be a little abstract here as I don’t feel too comfortable sharing interactions with those friends who we asked and who were kind enough to consider. Suffice to say asking a friend to be your sperm donor is one of the more terrifying conversations to have and also, for us, demonstrated the love and respect we had for the individuals we asked. We restricted our choices to men who already had children to reduce the chance of something being wrong donor-side if we were struggling to conceive which also shortened our list.

It’s hard not to feel rejected when people say no. Really hard. It’s also hard to reconcile some of the reasons given with your own feelings about the process and about how you view what is going on. Every reason given is valid for the person giving it regardless of whether it fits with your outlook – as hard as that may be in the moment. I personally really struggled with this part of the process – with having to ask someone else’s permission (in effect) to start a family. It’s hard to have someone outside of your relationship dictate whether this can happen. I’ve used quite emotive words there and that is not a reflection on any of our potential donors who were all lovely. It’s just how it felt from my side as the person who actually has no input (biologically) already, to have to wait for someone to agree to help. Unreasonably or not I felt angry and frustrated that the decision to start trying to conceive was not solely within mine and biomum’s control, that a third party, however vital, had a say.

This was one of things that drew me to places like Cryos. It felt like taking back control of the process for ourselves. Order the sperm, have it delivered and away we go. It felt impersonal and I wasn’t sure if I liked that. We could search by characteristic, sure, we could even go for extended profiles with more detailed background information, but we had no idea who these men were. Whether we would like them if we met them. It felt detached.

Fortunately for us, at the point where previous potentials hadn’t worked out, we got an offer. Yep, that elusive and mystical offer. Someone actually volunteered to help us start our family. Not only that but our thoughts about what we wanted were in sync. The contract writing was pretty easy (once we found a template) and every discussion about what needs to happen has been relaxed and involved a great deal of humour. Believe me, if you’re doing this yourselves, you need a lot of humour. We could not ask for better people (donor and his wife) to be doing this with and their willingness to help and their support and encouragement is invaluable and so, so appreciated.

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]]>https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/donor-search-part-2-our-journey/feed/0gvrw101Donor search – Part 1: Clinic/Home, Known/Anonymous?https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/donor-search-part-1-clinichome-knownanonymous/
https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/donor-search-part-1-clinichome-knownanonymous/#respondFri, 26 Jun 2015 13:40:54 +0000http://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/?p=27Continue reading →]]>Most of my posts thus far have been getting up to speed with where we are in terms of the practicalities of having a baby as a lesbian couple. I will get to grips with some of my thoughts and feelings in later posts but it seems wise to get up to speed first. There will be plenty of time whilst we’re going through false alarms and two week waits for me to delve into my psyche and do some navel gazing.

So…. donor search. Such fun (said in the style of Miranda’s mum). Many, many things to consider before the searching even begins. Do you want a known donor or anonymous? Do you want to go via a clinic or home insemination?

Going through a clinic generally involves using anonymous donor sperm where the most information available is ethnicity and general characteristics. The law changed in the UK in 2005 meaning that sperm donors donating to banks and clinics can be contacted by children born using their sperm, if the child so desires, once they turn 18. The sperm is screened and checked for STIs and certain genetic disorders – having said that how many straight couples screen their genetics unless they have a known recessive condition in their family? Most people just hope for the best and take their chances so this wasn’t a major consideration for us. Going through a clinic was something we wanted to avoid doing – partly due to the clinical, detached nature of the process and partly due to cost. As a rough guide to the costs involved in private treatment see the London Women’s Clinic treatment costs.

That leaves us with home insemination and the acquisition of sperm without the back-up of a clinic and their catalogue of donors. It’s still possible to do anonymous donation using the home insemination method. The options basically involve buying sperm from a bank either here or, as we considered, from somewhere like Denmark. The legalities are different and there isn’t the same automatic allowance of information to the child once they turn 18. Anonymous donors can remain anonymous forever unlike in the UK. The costs are also lower using places like Cryos than in the UK – sperm can be shipped to you or you can travel to Denmark to collect it.

Sperm banks are not the only option, though now we venture into the potentially murky world of known donors. That’s a bit of an exaggeration really – if you manage to find a known donor you are comfortable with it is awesome and I’ll talk about our personal search in a bit. There are however places that will help you find a donor. Pride Angel was one place we looked and seriously considered before our donor situation was resolved. The site itself is great idea. It acts as a connection platform between donors (sperm and egg) and recipients. It’s free to join but to send members a message you need to buy credits. They also sell a variety of home insemination kits and other useful things like vitamins and, my favourite, the sperm shaped stressball. The donors themselves were a mixed bag – some came across in their blurb as entirely genuine and altruistic. Some had already completed their families and wanted to help others achieve the same. Some appeared to be less genuine – talking about needing a physical attraction for instance did not fill me with confidence. Nor did anyone who filled in the medical questionnaire and refused to be tested for STIs. I’d approach any connections with strangers with caution and employ a good deal of common sense if going down this route. We had already decided to meet any potential donor that we didn’t know personally in a hotel rather than our own home despite the seedy connotations that conjured up.

The final option in the known donor approach is to ask a friend or hope that one volunteers. This conjures up a whole other world of potential issues (it’s not exactly something to easily drop into conversation) and can be awkward in the extreme.

Oh and if I haven’t said it enough already last post – if you’re not using a clinic or sperm bank, contracts are your friend.

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]]>https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/donor-search-part-1-clinichome-knownanonymous/feed/0gvrw101Legalitieshttps://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/legalities/
https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/legalities/#respondThu, 25 Jun 2015 09:55:34 +0000http://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/?p=16Continue reading →]]>One major concern in all of this was the legal issues surrounding parentage of the child and my rights as nonbiomum. This is one of the major ways in which the UK differs from the US and makes a lot of the US-centric sites and books of very little use at all.

biomum and I are in a civil partnership (soon to be upgraded to a marriage) and so, provided insemination of biomum is artificial (either in a clinic or by home insemination), we will both be listed on the birth certificate. Our child will have no legal father and the donor will not be listed anywhere on the birth certificate. Obviously if biomum was to have intercourse with the donor this would be different – it would be exactly the same as any straight couple conceiving and donor would be listed as the father. That isn’t going to happen of course, and thus my legal position as second parent to our child is secure.

The law in the UK is based largely on whether biomum and I are in a civil partnership and how the insemination takes place. Female-female civil partners using artificial insemination are both the legal parents of the child – the law does state that the non-birth mother must consent to the insemination but it also presumes consent unless demonstrated otherwise.

Non-civil partnered lesbians have a more interesting time. In this case for both women to be the legal parents from the outset, insemination must take place in a UK clinic and both parties must sign election forms agreeing that the non-birth mother should be treated as a legal parent. There is no option for home insemination here – this would lead to the non-birth mother having to legally adopt the child. Once again – when the child has two legal mothers they do not have a legal father.

The impact on the donor differs depending on the method of insemination. If this is done through a clinic the donor has legal protection against financial and parental responsibility automatically. If the insemination is done at home there is no such automatic legal protection and so drawing up a contract protecting both donor and recipient from any legal challenges is so highly recommended it’s not even funny. Seriously, do it. Even if your donor is a good friend, all parties need to have their rights protected. Talk about it with your donor, get the wording right and get it witnessed. This doesn’t prevent a legal challenge but it does act as document of intent and it is likely that even a non-notarised document would be upheld in court. Unfortunately a lot of the sample donor documents are from the US and cover specific donor-recipient situations but they can be altered to suit your own needs. We found this one to be most useful but altered it to match our own situation. A lawyer will draw up a contract for you but for a fee – though depending on your relationship to your donor you might want that extra level of protection.

A good resource on the legalities of donor insemination for same-sex couples is Stonewall – the ‘Pregnant Pause’ pdf linked from their site is excellent reading for lesbians trying to conceive and they lay out the legalities in a clear and concise way.

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]]>https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/legalities/feed/0gvrw101Next Stephttps://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/06/24/next-step/
https://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/2015/06/24/next-step/#respondWed, 24 Jun 2015 11:26:04 +0000http://nonbiomum.wordpress.com/?p=14Continue reading →]]>Having decided that we were going to have a baby, biomum and I began to look into the options. Obviously just having lots of sex wasn’t going to work (though we did amuse at our GP with that) – not without an added ingredient. I’d been the slower of the two of us to admit that children was something I wanted and given we wanted to give biomum the chance to carry the child we did consider using my eggs and her uterus. Briefly.

For those of you who don’t know, IVF is expensive. Our PCT has only just relented and decided to allow one cycle of IVF on the NHS provided you are under a certain age and have been trying for a certain period of time (with sperm, dammit) – we doubted very much that they would fund harvesting my eggs as well as everything else. Going private was looking like it would be prohibitively expensive especially adding in the cost of buying sperm from a bank. The idea of us having a child that could be considered to come from both of us – my genetic material combined with biomum carrying the child and being the birth mother was just not going to be viable. We would be forced to go down the very clinical route of IVF and, expense aside, it all seemed too impersonal unless we had to. The process of home insemination is by not means romantic but at least it would be the two of us, together, making a baby – even if the baby would have no genetic link to me.

As far as the NHS goes – until you’ve been trying to conceive for a while the only assistance or checks available are some basic blood tests for biomum to check things like iron levels. If we encounter problems later than there are things the NHS may be able to offer us but without going private for either IVF or the acquisition of sperm we were on our own.

I found myself really envying my straight friends at this point. Unless there are specific fertility issues with one party or the other all they have to do is have unprotected sex, a lot. I appreciate this is over-simplifying massively. Getting pregnant can take time and be hard work but compared to what we were facing – finding a sperm donor, home insemination etc, it just seemed too easy for everyone else. Especially when you read the cases of child neglect. I had so much pent-up frustration about how unfair it was. This is before you add in the rubbish about being gay being a ‘lifestyle choice’ and that I shouldn’t therefore be able to have children because I chose to be with a woman. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issues with my sexuality – but it’s not a choice. This is how I’m wired. I also want children and it shouldn’t be this hard.